Identifying Heartburn Triggers: Why You Should Keep a Food Diary

If you’re suffering from heartburn, a food diary may not be the first thing you think of to help you feel better. Most patients reach for antacids and over-the-counter acid-reducing medication. However, if you can identify and eliminate your triggers, you might be able to enter remission. If you’re asking yourself how do you figure out what is causing heartburn or how do you identify food triggers, a food diary is probably a good next step.

What Is a Food Diary and What Is It for?

A food diary is exactly what it sounds like: a place for you to log everything you eat or drink so that you can identify your acid reflux triggers. However, many patients don’t get specific enough in their food diary. This post will answer a common question we get here at the Tampa Bay Reflux Center: how do you keep a food diary for acid reflux?

How Do You Identify Food Triggers?

A food diary is a great way to do this in a structured, detailed manner. Some patients have success with simple monitoring of the food groups they eat, then hone in on each group that appears to cause them trouble. However, a food diary takes little investigation and there’s no awkward struggles of remembering what you ate for lunch last week.

How Do You Figure Out What Is Causing Heartburn?

Generally speaking, our patients avoid all trigger foods and call it a day. However, some patients find that general triggers do not trigger their symptoms. In these cases, those patients get to eat the foods that others might be avoiding unnecessarily. Furthermore, some patients avoid all trigger foods but still have heartburn. For these patients, there is an additional trigger that needs to be identified - or their lower esophageal sphincter (LES) is simply shot.

How Do You Keep a Food Diary for Acid Reflux?

First and foremost, start your diary somewhere you know you’ll have access to it all day. Some patients decide to use an application or notes file on their phone, while others buy a beautiful notebook to jot everything down on. Whatever you choose, make sure it works for you. Here are a few other tips to help you out:

• Be highly specific in each of your entries; for example:

  • 5/10/22 - Breakfast, 7:30 AM: 1 piece of Sara Lee whole-grain toast with 1 tsp salted butter and one scrambled egg (1 tsp whole milk added).

  • 5/10/22 - Dinner, 6:00 PM: half of a chicken breast (dry seared, then roasted with spices: garlic, onion, salt, pepper, paprika, thyme, rosemary), ¼ russet potato (roasted with olive oil, salt, pepper), five spears of asparagus (roasted with parmesan cheese, olive oil, salt, pepper).

• Log each food as you eat it or prepare it. It’s much harder to remember every ingredient that was in your lung the next morning.

• Be very detailed when you log each of your symptoms, making a note of when you started to feel it. These timings will help correlate foods with your symptoms.

• Be honest with yourself. No one else is going to read your diary except you and your doctor (maybe). Be detailed to help yourself remember how you felt when you ate certain foods. You might even find that the food diary holds you accountable - you might even start to eat healthier.

Still Struggling? See an Acid Reflux Specialist in Tampa

Here at the Tampa Bay Reflux Center, we have a team of doctors and nurses that specialize in the treatment of reflux. If we can’t help you find a non-invasive treatment option for you, we can schedule you for one of our reflux surgeries. Get in touch with our team to learn more today.